My lap continues to be a playing board for cat chess. The stakes have been raised as the blanket I’m crocheting gets larger and there is actually room for a toe beans.
Yes. There are cat hairs crocheted indelibly into the blanket.
Check mate
Tag: acrylic
Yarn chicken redo
I lost at yarn chicken on a baby blanket edge. I needed to make two more scallops to finish and there just wasn’t enough yarn. Rather than scrap the whole edge, I ripped out just the last side and redid it so the scallops spanned 6 stitches instead of five. This gave me less scallops overall on that edge and I had enough yarn to complete the edge.
The blanket is based on Mary Maxim’s Easy Diagonal Blanket pattern, but done with alternating two rows of white, purple, and pink. I deviated on the edge too, by doing a single crochet all along the outer edge to hide yarn ends, then making 5-double crochet scallops along the edge.
I used acrylic yarn for the blanket because it is machine washable and dry-able, and new moms do not need any gift that can’t be easily washed.
Crocheted Wisteria Wreath update
I couldn’t take it. Looking at the crocheted Wisteria wreath every time I opened the front door, I couldn’t take the tri-colored “blooms”. I made more light purple elements and replaced the multi-colored ones.
Now to see how it weathers.
Brioche cowl with color shift yarn
Here is the finished brioche knit cowl that I made with yarn that had a long color shift. I absolutely love the play of color that appeared by knitting it from opposite ends of the same pull skein.
The yarn was two ply with each ply a separate color, so some sections were solid color, but others were purple and gray, or blue and purple, and the colored sections were long. As I was rolling up the yarn into two separate balls, I did find some knots from the manufacturer that put an abrupt color change in the yarn. I reknotted those sections to different areas of the yarn that had a closer match. It pays to rewind commercially spun long repeat yarn to check for inappropriate color changes due to knots.
Second attempt
I tried again with the ombre brioche cowl, after I bound off my first botched attempt. This time instead of working from the inside and outside of the commercial pull skein, I divided the yarn into two nostepinne wound balls.
Because each ball will slowly change color as I knit, I marked ball “B” with a blue stitch marker so I could keep track of which one I was working with.
Brioche takes longer because each row is passed over twice: once to knit every other stitch, once to purl every other stitch, slipping the unstitched loops with an added yarn over, but I am quite pleased with the way the color changes play against each other in the fabric.
Critters and Craft 